


the trouble that you choose

by ambyr



Category: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: Life on the road, together.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	the trouble that you choose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellseries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellseries/gifts).



Tet Sang prodded the slice of lotus root discreetly with one finger. There was no hint of give. If he dropped it, it would bounce; the only question was how high.

Guet Imm turned away from the fire, and he hastily lowered his hand into his lap.

"More rice porridge?" she asked, holding out the pot. Below the half-inch of water that topped the pot, he could see individual rice grains shifting, revealing a new pattern of burned patches each time they rolled over.

"I am very full," he tried.

Her expression became instantly crestfallen. "You don't like it, brother?"

Tet Sang opened his mouth, then closed it. "Sister . . . we all have our talents. Maybe next time, I cook."

"No," Guet Imm said immediately. "Last time you set fire to the porridge."

"You burned the porridge also," he pointed out.

Her eyes flicked down to the pot, then back to meet his. "But it is not on fire."

This was difficult to argue with, but he tried anyway. "No one was hurt."

"The Goddess blesses us," she said piously. "Better we not take it for granted and try her patience again." She tried to pull a spoon full of porridge out of the pot; the porridge pulled back, sucking at the utensil. Tet Sang watched the wresting match with interest. "Anyway," Guet Imm said, still tugging, "if you do not want porridge I will go into town, find a coffee shop, and buy us food."

"Sister, we are wanted criminals."

"No," she said, serene. She held her beatific expression even as the spoon came free with a loud _slurp_. " _You_ are a wanted criminal. _I_ am a nun."

Tet Sang crossed his arms. "A nun who killed a bandit."

"Since when do the mata care about who kills bandits? Maybe they will give me a medal. _If_ they find out." She could see his resolve crumbling. "Karipap," she coaxed. "Pisang goreng."

"You don't want to eat your own porridge also," Tet Sang said drily.

"Fresh roti," Guet Imm said. "Roti with curry."

Tet Sang threw up his hands. "Fine. But if you are still gone in two hours, I will come after you. And hope no one can recognize my face."

* * *

She was not back within two hours. Tet Sang took his time packing up the camp, scrubbing the unfortunate porridge from the pot with handfuls of grass and sand, thoroughly shaking out each blanket before folding it away. It would be like Guet Imm, he thought, only a little uncharitably, to drop unexpectedly out of a tree just as the work was finished. But when the last of their possessions was stowed away inside his pack, there was still no sign of her.

It was not that he was worried about Guet Imm, he told himself. Guet Imm could look after herself. It was that he was worried about any villagers who might get in her way while she was doing so.

With a sigh, he shouldered his pack and headed to town in the midday heat.

By the time Tet Sang made it to the coffee shop nearest the edge of town, sweat was dripping down his shoulder blades and had nearly sealed the headband of his hat to his head. He took off the hat, ran his fingers through his hair, grimaced, and jammed the hat back on his head. He didn't need to look presentable; he needed to look like he wasn't the man on the wanted poster.

He need not have worried. The coffee shop was full of Tang men, all equally bedraggled, eating listless lunches and hiding from the heat of the day, like any sensible person. What it was not full of was Guet Imm.

"Excuse me," Tet Sang asked the server as he passed near the door. "Have you seen a nun?"

The man blinked. "A nun?"

"About so high," Tet Sang said, holding out a hand to demonstrate. "Bald head."

"No," said the server over his shoulder as a shouting patron pulled him away. "No nuns."

Tet Sang pondered this. He looked at the pile of steaming pisang goreng on one worker's plate. He looked out the door, where the sun was still blazing. He sighed. Then he walked back outside.

* * *

It seemed extremely unlikely that Guet Imm would have walked past one coffee shop in search of a better one. Whatever her declarations of innocence, she knew the fewer people who saw them, the better. It was more likely Tet Sang had missed something on the road, too caught up in dreams of sweet and spicy food. He backtracked carefully, and halfway down the road, he saw it: a place where the trees were a little less thick, where the undergrowth grew with the sort of wild enthusiasm that came from reclaiming ground long kept clear.

Guet Imm had the knack for slipping between and across branches unhindered; Tet Sang had a parang. He unstrapped his pack, pulled it out from where he had buried it away from the curious eyes of any passing mata, wiped the sweat from his brow again, and began working his way uphill along the abandoned track. It was not a very long track, but it was long enough for him to develop several inventive and scripturally accurate curses for nuns who wandered astray.

He nearly tripped over a roof tile before he saw what remained of the tokong's entrance gate. Even the scorch marks had weathered away, leaving only bare bleached stone. It must have been burned very early in the war--maybe even by the Yamatese.

Tet Sang wiped sap off his parang, sheathed it, but did not put it back in his pack. Now that the odor of fresh-cut jungle had faded, he could smell a faint hint of smoke. He followed the scent deeper into the ruins.

"Hello," said Guet Imm brightly, when he finally found her at the fire. She was boiling water, or so he judged from the fact that nothing within the small pot she was tending smelled burnt. He thought even Guet Imm would have difficulty burning water.

"You call this a coffee shop?" he asked. There was a man leaning against the one standing wall behind her, his eyes half-closed. "This waiter does not seem to be working so hard, sister."

She frowned at him. "This is brother Jie. He is not a waiter. Jie, this is brother Sang."

"Hello," said Jie, awkwardly. His voice was thin and rasping. He started to say something else, but it was swallowed by a fit of coughing.

"Shh," said Guet Imm. "Wait for the tea." 

Tet Sang knew the order was not only meant for her patient. He gave her a look that meant, _we will talk when this is done_. Her expression back said only, _I have no idea what you think needs to be said_. He snorted softly.

"I should set up camp, yes?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer went to find a corner of the tokong where it was less likely that a wall would collapse on them in the night.

* * *

Guet Imm found him while he was still stretching the mosquito net.

"He is sleeping now, so do not shout," she said, preemptively.

"Shout? Why would I shout?" She had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. Tet Sang sighed. "You knew this place was here," he said.

"Yes," Guet Imm admitted. "But I did mean to find food. I wanted to look first, only. And then I heard him coughing in the ruins. His lungs--." Her nose wrinkled, and she made a gesture that might have meant something if he had ever studied more than the second finger of the deity's hand. "I've never seen lungs so bad before."

"Mining is hard on the lungs," Tet Sang agreed.

"Mining? How do you know what he does? You said hello, only."

Tet Sang shrugged. "He's wearing the uniform of the Protectorate's mines. He's a runaway, sister. But I wouldn't worry about them chasing him. He ran away to die."

Guet Imm scowled at him. "He's not going to die. I gave him very good tea."

"A little more than tea, I think," Tet Sang said. 

Guet Imm could be brash, but even with him, she did not like to talk about shaping the air. She gave a short, jerky nod instead. "Just another day here, brother. Maybe two."

Two days was a long time to wait if the bandits were still following them, but Tet Sang put that aside. "And then what, sister? You cannot heal every miner, or every farmer who has been gored by his pig."

Guet Imm set her jaw. "Why not?"

"People will talk."

Guet Imm dropped to a crouch and began, uncharacteristically, to fidget, drawing lines in the dirt with a twig. "Brother," she said finally, "I spent fifteen years in seclusion. I hid from the world. I was very good at hiding from the world, see? And if that was what the goddess wanted me to do, I think maybe she would not have let my tokong burn down."

" _Everyone's_ tokong burned down," Tet Sang pointed out, gesturing at their surroundings.

"Maybe she would not have let _everyone's_ tokong burn down," Guet Imm said doggedly. 

"Sister," Tet Sang said, "you are not the reason--"

"I know that," she said. "But what I am saying is, I cannot just hide in the jungle. I cannot go find another coffee shop to work in. And you know that, or you would not have followed me. A waitress wouldn't need looking after."

"A waitress might, if that waitress was you." Guet Imm opened her mouth, but he flapped a hand in her direction. "Anyway of course you cannot find another coffee shop to work in. Your references are terrible."

"I could get references if I wanted," she said, indignant.

"But you don't want," he said, and, greatly daring, reached out to still her hand with his. Her eyes grew very wide as their skin touched. "If this is what you want, sister, then this is what we will do. Only--"

"Yes?" she asked.

Tet Sang shook himself slightly, forcing away the distraction of her soft fingers under his. "Only, we cannot stay more than one day. And next time," he said severely, "we will find food _first_."

Guet Imm's stomach rumbled, removing any possibility of argument. "I wonder," she said, looking back hopefully toward the fallen building where her tea fire still sent up a thin stream of smoke, "if Jie knows how to cook."


End file.
